39% of Israeli settlements 'on private land'

An Israeli human rights group produced figures yesterday showing that 39% of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are built on private Palestinian land.

The claim by Settlement Watch, part of the Peace Now organisation, represents a potentially serious challenge to the Israeli government because Israeli courts have ruled that settlements must not be built on confiscated private Palestinian land.

The report is based on a leaked 2004 database from the civil administration, the government body in charge of settlement building. It found that 39% of the total area of settlements, outposts and industrial zones in the West Bank was built on private Palestinian land.

"It is clear that the settlement enterprise has, since its inception, ignored Israeli law and undermined not only the collective property rights of the Palestinians as a people, but also the private property rights of individual Palestinian landowners," the group wrote.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was elected earlier this year on a programme of consolidating the West Bank settlements, but since the war in Lebanon that plan has been shelved. There are now around 400,000 settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In a key ruling in 1979, the Israeli high court said settlements should only be built on state land. A report produced last year by former Israeli state prosecutor Talya Sason said it was "absolutely prohibited" to build on private land.

Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the civil administration, said land ownership was not always clear. "It is very hard to tell in many cases," he said. The so-called Blue Line committee was still investigation land ownership disputes, he said.